Valley of Abandoned Songs (Vinyl)

The Felice Brothers released their new full-length album Valley of Abandoned Songs, the first release on Conor Oberst’s new label imprint Million Stars. The 13-song collection consists of recordings primarily from sessions for the band’s 2019 album, Undress, as well as their most recent release, 2023’s Asylum On The Hill, with band’s current lineup of Ian Felice (guitar/vocals), James Felice (piano/vocals), Jeske Hume (bass), and Will Lawrence (drums). “A few years ago, I started revisiting old demos that had never seen the light of day and recordings that hadn’t found a home on previous albums, and I started thinking of them as the Valley of Abandoned Songs,” explains Ian Felice. “At a certain point, I realized that I had a particular group of tunes that worked really well as an album, and so I shared it with Conor, along with my idea to post it online, but he immediately texted back that he loved it so much he wanted to start a new record label just to put it out.”

Felice adds: “There’s a tightrope walk between light and dark in these songs between the magical wonder of existence and the ever-present sense of impending doom that comes with it. This album is my way of reconciling those things. A lot of these songs are amalgamations. The settings can change from verse to verse and scene to scene. I don’t necessarily know who these characters are or where they come from, but they all evoke something very real in me.”

The album’s two singles “Crime Scene Queen” and “Flowers By The Roadside” garnered praise from the likes of BrooklynVegan, No Depression, Glide Magazine, and Paste Magazine, which praised Ian Felice’s “sugar-sweet” vocals and called the song “one of the catchiest songs you’ll hear all week.”